The School Bully

by Fiona Wilde

  The School Bully

  By

  Fiona Wilde

  ©2012 by Blushing Books® and Fiona Wilde

  Copyright © 2012 by Blushing Books® and Fiona Wilde

  All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Blushing Books®,

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  Wilde, Fiona

  The School Bully

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-60968-158-6

  Cover Design by ABCD Graphics and Sullivan Clarke

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.

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  Chapter One

  Anna Fowler pushed the door of the eighth grade classroom at Bridgestone Academy and stood still as it slowly opened. It surprised her that, even after all these years, the hinges still creaked. The door came to a rest and she stood now facing into the classroom, surprised that it still looked so familiar. The hardwood floors – newly polished for the school year – were the same. The color of the walls – sea foam green – was the same. The school was even still using the old-style Venetian blinds on the windows, the kind with the wide slats.

  Anna wasn't sure what she had been expecting. Did she think a school that prided itself on conservative values and education would have really undergone a dramatic makeover since she'd graduated. She still recalled the day she'd picked up her diploma, how happy she'd been to leave the halls of an institution she hated. Each year she'd begged her parents to send her to Belmont High School, give her a chance to get an education away from the arrogant sons and daughters of her father's wealthy colleagues. But her parents had refused. Admittance into the exclusive academy was a privilege, they reminded her. But Anna knew it represented more than that. Having a kid in Bridgestone was another piece needed to complete the social puzzle her parents were so determined to maintain. It didn't matter to them that their small, pale daughter was an oddity among her tall, tone and tanned peers. From the moment she'd entered Bridgestone she'd been picked on by the other kids. No matter how hard Anna tried to get her wavy mass of long black hair to conform to the sleek ponytails the other girls wore it always ended up falling in rebellious tendrils around her face. No matter how much she stayed out in the sun, her skin was always alabaster.

  “Freak,” they whispered, blocking her way and she'd muscle through them, tears stinging her huge, dark eyes as their laughter rang in her ears.

  At home her parents would ask Anna how her day had gone. Their expectant expectations said it all: Please tell us you're fitting in. So Anna would just say, “Fine,” rather than distress them with how Sybil Mince had called her Spider Girl and Myra Watkins had glued her locker door shut. She's not told her parents the worst of it, that when she'd asked Logan Chance if he'd help her open her locker he'd just grinned and walked away.

  “Open it yourself, freak,” he'd said. “And hurry. You're going to be late for bio.”

  She'd gotten the locker open by prying it with a screwdriver she found in the janitor's closet. Myra had spread glue on her books as well. By the time Anna got everything she needed out and cleaned off, she was fifteen minutes late for class.

  Mr. Carter had not been amused.

  “Miss Fowler, I hope you have a good excuse for your tardiness,” he said, scowling at her from under his comb-over.

  “I was...” Anna looked at the threatening faces of her tormenters and knew the truth would just bring more trouble. She decided on a half-truth.

  “I couldn't get my locker open,” she said quietly. The classroom had erupted in laughter.

  “That's because they aren't designed for elves,” Logan chance had offered. The class guffawed.

  Anna raised her dark eyes to look at Logan. Handsome and tall, he was a senior and the captain of the school lacrosse team. To girls and boys alike, he was like the pied piper. His peers trailed him everywhere; an unkind word or taunt from him spelled social doom. Until that day, he'd stayed on the periphery of the teasing, his only involvement laughing at whatever sport they made of her. Now that he was taking a lead role, she'd be fair game for anyone – even the less popular kids looking to curry favor with their leader by joining the hunt.

  Logan had officially sanctioned her torment, and even though he graduated that same year for the rest of her middle and high school years, his influence left a legacy. She’d been one of his targets and was fair game. Anna hated Bridgestone Academy more with each passing day. She hated the way everyone curried favor with the popular kids. She hated the way they stalked the halls doing as they pleased, immune to anything more than tepid reprimands by teachers that seemed almost as enamored with the “golden children” as their peers were. The imperfect students – the ones like her – bore the brunt of not just peer injustice but staff injustice as well. The day after Anna's locker was glued shut she was called into the principal's office and suspended for destruction of property. Her frantic efforts to pry open the locker had left it dented, and because she feared further cruelty from Logan and his gang, she refused to implicate the bullies in what they had done.

  Her parents were furious, humiliated and terrified that the friends they admired – ironically the parents of the popular kids – would now think badly of them.

  “Are you trying to embarrass this family?” her father had asked, red-faced.

  It was only then that Anna had confided in them what she'd been going through. Finally, she thought, her parents would help. But they did not. Mr. Fowler had no desire to call bank president Logan Chance, Sr., and discuss his son's behavior. Nor did he want to cause problems for the kids of the hospital CEO, the local developer or the grocery store chain owner.

  “Kids will be kids, sweetheart,” he said. “They're only picking on you because they like you. So try to fit in...”

  But Ann had no interest in fitting in and settled for developing what few friendships
she could within the studious crowd of kids. Where straight A's should have impressed her parents and teachers, it was still popularity that mattered. She got few kind words from the teachers other than to remark favorably on her scores, and fewer still from her parents who became agitated whenever someone they respected mentioned that Anna's peers found her “strange.” Anna found it disgusting that adult society in Langford was just a grown-up reflection of what she was experiencing in school. Adults still curried favor, obsessed over where they fit in the social caste, worked too hard to be liked.

  Anna could not wait to leave and she did on the day she graduated. She'd had her pick of any colleges, and her parents had hoped she'd choose one of the universities their friends were so proud to send their kids to. But Anna was done with the games. She had a pick of scholarships and selected a good, private teaching college upstate. She'd decided to become an educator and had it in her mind that when she graduated and found a job she'd be the kind of teacher that would champion kids like her, and put stuck-up little socialite brats in their place if they even though treating their peers with cruelty.

  She knew she'd be a good teacher, and she was. But the time she'd graduated from college, she'd blossomed both socially and physically. She'd purposefully chosen a university with a good academic reputation and her new peers were serious and studious. Her waiflike appearance was now seen as something to admire, and she stopped hiding behind baggy dark clothing and began to wear fashionable outfits that accentuated her small but shapely frame. The mane of wavy black hair that hung almost to her waist was the envy of her friends; Anna accentuated it with colorful combs or tied it back with bright ribbons. When she began student teaching, her diminutive size made her approachable to even the most timid students, while her new-found confidence kept the older ones from taking advantage of her.

  She had multiple, but settled on an inner city middle school. Her first year was tough; the students here weren't so much catty as gritty. They came from backgrounds she never could have imagined and her heart went out to them. She quickly became confidante to the troubled ones; the kids trusted her and her colleagues admired her.

  Anna was happy, both professionally and personally. She had a good circle of friends and even enjoyed dating and had even had a couple of almost-serious boyfriends. She planned to stay where she was, and would have had her father not died. It was sudden, a heart attack. It left her mother a wreck and Anna – ever dutiful – decided to come back to Langford.

  The only problem was finding a job. Even with her stellar credentials and references, she could find nothing in the public school system. The tough economy had led to a hiring freeze and the only jobs available were at Bridgestone Academy, which had undergone a staff shakeup the year before after a scandal involving the headmaster and a nubile senior student. The scandal had hit the paper, rocking the ivy-covered structure to its foundation. Bridgestone went into full damage control mode; the entire upper administration was fired, along with a number of instructors who were personal friends with the headmaster. Some locals called it a witch hunt, but the board was eager to salvage the school's reputation.

  Anna's homecoming coincided with the school's head hunt. She had only reluctantly dropped off her resume and was surprised when her cell phone rang just moments after leaving the school. The board was interested – no, eager – to meet her. They apologized for not yet having a new headmaster and hoped that they'd trust the board to appoint a new administrator who would be worthy of her loyalty and respect.

  It amused Anna to hear the board member being so solicitous to a former student that had never been celebrated, that had never made head cheerleader or filled the trophy case with awards. It gratified her to be accepted on merit, to be finally taken seriously in a town she'd always considered shallow.

  She took the job. When school started after Labor Day, she'd be the new eighth grade teacher. Anna planned to spend the year teaching her mother to be more independent. She'd make more in that one year than she'd make working three years in the public school system. After that, she told herself, she'd leave. She knew that the administration would be disappointed, but after the years of pain she'd suffered at the school she figured taking the money and running would even the score.

  Anna was confident she could handle a year at her hated alma mater. So it unnerved her a bit to find all the feelings of fear and apprehension rushing back as she looked in on the classroom where she'd spent so many unhappy hours. Her old home room where now, instead of avoiding eye contact with the class, she'd be facing them, teaching them. She wondered how many of her new students would be like the students she'd known – the petulant antagonists who dared the teachers to call mommy or daddy.

  “Take a deep breath,” she said to herself, and walked up to the teacher's desk. Her desk. The former inhabitant had apparently not bothered to clean her desk. Paper clips and confiscated gum and notes littered the bottom of the top drawer. The file drawer was filled with lesson plans, a log book and mimeographed test sheets. Anna took out the log book and perused it quickly, noting which students had been written up. There had been quite a few; some had been sent to the headmaster multiple times.

  “PADDLED.” The word, scrawled in red, by one problem student's name caught her attention. Anna was genuinely shocked that the school still used corporal punishment. She remembered students fearfully whispering of that particular penalty. Always administered by the headmaster, it was seen as the ultimate humiliation. She'd never seen the paddle, but had heard of it. It was long and thick and hung in the headmaster's closet. She remembered one or two students – burly rugby players, both – who had been called to the office for that particular punishment. They had been caught smoking. The boys had left the classroom with smirks on their faces and had returned walking stiffly, their faces flaming with embarrassment and their eyes red-rimmed from crying. The sight had terrified their classmates; even the miscreants behaved after seeing their heroes so subdued, or at least were more careful not to get caught.

  Anna made an instant decision to enlighten the conservative academy about how disciplinary issues were to be handled. This wasn’t the 16th century; it was 2010. There were other ways to reach kids besides brute force. The idea of hauling kids in for a paddling was disturbing, especially to someone who could only imagine such brutality. Anna had never been spanked, and couldn’t imagine that any child could be subject to such a thing - especially teenagers who should be dealt with through reason. Bridgestone didn’t discriminate between girls and boys when it came to the penalty; girls could be paddled, too, although she’d never personally known any girl who’d been punished that way at the school. It had happened; she knew that. Two years before she had enrolled a girl named Celeste Conner had called her gym teacher a bitch in front of the entire class. She was taken to the principal’s office and her parents were given a choice; they could allow their daughter paddled or see her expelled. They approved the paddling. Celeste’s cries could be heard all the way to the cafeteria, or so the story went. Even now the very idea gave Anna a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach; she couldn’t imagine being bent over the headmaster’s desk, the plaid skirt of the school uniform barely covering a vulnerable bottom waiting for the hard sting of the paddle.

  No, she would not allow such things at a school where she taught.

  There came a knock at the door and a plump woman with red hair and a cheery smile stepped in.

  “Hi!” she said. “I’m Genevieve Carlton, but you can call me Ginny. I’m the guidance counselor slash school nurse here.” She extended her hand. “You’re Anna, right?”

  Anna smiled and accepted the handshake. “Yes,” she said.

  “Well it’s good to have you, although it’s hard to imagine you teaching if you don’t mind my saying so. Some of your students are going to be bigger than you.”

  “I’m used to that,” Anna said of the oft-made observation. “But that’s OK. I’ve faced some tough kids.”

  �
�Oh, I heard,” Ginny said, wide-eyed. “You taught in the hood.” She said “hood” like it was a forbidden word.”

  Anna resisted the urge to give into the anger she felt. “It was an urban area, but we never called it the ‘hood,” she said. “I enjoyed teaching in an urban school, and having gone here let me dispel any notions you have about those kids. A lot of them were better behaved than some of the kids I went to school with here at Bridgestone.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean…” Ginny turned as red as her hair. “I’m sorry. I just thought maybe this was like a step up you’d been waiting for.”

  Anna sighed as she dumped the contents of the top drawer of the desk into the trash.

  “No,” she said, setting the drawer back down and looking at her colleague. “My father died not too long ago. I took the job here to be for my mom. She’s having a really tough time. If my dad were still here I’d still be at my old job.”

  “Oh…” Ginny looked away and an awkward silence filled the room as Anna slid the desk drawer back in and continued cleaning.

  “I hear they’re going to announce a new headmaster any day,” Ginny offered, her voice hopeful that this new line of questioning would end with less embarrassment.

  “That’s nice,” said Anna, wishing she could be alone.

  “It was down between three guys - two of them old and one young. Well, not young. He’s a few years older than you. Word is that the younger one’s favored to win, even though he’s not an educator.”

  Anna looked up. “Not an educator?”

  “No!” Ginny said excitedly. “He’s an executive from old money. The board wants the school to run like a business. Accountability and all that. Is that weird or what?”